Not year on year widespread prophylactic
vaccination

Letter from the

National Foot and Mouth Group

- sent to Daily Telegraph and Warmwell. August 14 2007

Dear Sir

May I
respond to some of the concerns raised regarding Foot and Mouth Disease
Vaccination. The vaccination control that is proposed when faced with an
outbreak of FMD is that of emergency protective vaccination, in close proximity
to the centres of disease, not year on year widespread prophylactic
vaccination.

The process involves vaccinating animals with
inactivated vaccines produced from highly purified antigens which are free from
Non Structural Proteins (NSP) of the FMD virus. These vaccines confer
immunity quickly. In addition, even if the animal is already incubating
FMD, it greatly reduces the amount of virus that animal produces. This
process enabled the Dutch to bring their 2001 outbreak under control in just
eight days.

However the chief advantage in using NSP free vaccines is
that a differential test can then be used to determine which flocks and herds
have responded solely to vaccination, and thus are free of disease, as opposed
to those flocks and herds which have responded to infection and therefore need
to be culled.

So robust is this approach that in May 2002 the Office
International Des Epizooties (OIE), the body which oversees international
disease free status, changed the International Animal Health Code to allow
countries to return to disease free status 6 months after vaccination, as
opposed to 12 months.

In addition in September 2003 the EU adopted a
revised Directive on the Control of FMD which also endorsed this approach.
Both organisations agreed that the use of NSP free vaccines, followed by the
application of differential tests, was acceptable to control outbreaks of the
disease and to enable the nation state to demonstrate it had achieved freedom
from disease.

Furthermore, the EU have also made provision for member
states to apply for derogations which allow vaccinated meat, milk, and products
destined for the home market to be treated no differently from non-vaccinated
product, once testing has been completed.

As regards costs; as most
animals would then be able to live out their economic lives, the costs of
vaccination would be far less than the cost of slaughter, compensation,
transportation and disposal. The only loss would be regarding the export
market of live vaccinated animals and un-boned vaccinated meat.

In the
current outbreak, the disease has, hopefully, been contained and controlled with
only two infected premises and thus there has been no recourse to move to
vaccination. However if the outbreak had become more widespread and
dispersed it is welcome news that the Government has moved quickly to secure
300,000 doses of emergency vaccine and put vaccination teams on stand
by.